A History of the People of the Subcontinent of India In a Nutshell

Lifescapes of India A History of the People of the Subcontinent of India In a Nutshell Rajeswari Chatterjee

This book was prepared as part of Lifescapes, a life writing program sponsored by the University of Nevada Department of English, the Washoe County Library System, and the Nevada Humanities Committee. Copyright 2003 by Rajeswari Chatterjee Frandsen Humanities Press University of Nevada Department of English Reno, Nevada 89557

Contents 1. ANCIENT INDIA...1 2. INDIA THROUGH THE MIDDLE AGES...13 3. HOW AND WHY THE EUROPEANS CAME TO INDIA...25 4. HOW THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE WERE LAID IN INDIA...29 5. GROWTH OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN INDIA...33 6. THE GREAT INDIAN MUTINY...46 7. INDIA BECOMES BRITISH INDIAN EMPIRE UNDER THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND...49 8 QUEEN VICTORIA AS EMPRESS OF INDIA AND BIRTH OF THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS...53 9 INDIA UNDER KING EDWARD VI...55 10. INDIA UNDER GEORGE V AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR...56 11. INDIA IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR (1939-1945)...59 12. INDIA OBTAINS INDEPEDENCE...61 13. THE GREAT EPICS OF INDIA...64 The Mahabharata...64 The Ramayana...65 14. SOME STORIES FROM INDIAN HISTORY...68 14.1 Chandragupta Maurya...68

14.2 The Fabulous Vijayanagar Kingdom...69 14.3 The Adventures of the Venetian Marco Polo in India in the Thirteenth Century...70 14.5 The Religious Policy of Akbar, the greatest of the Mughal Emperors...75 14.6 Life of an English Memsaheb in India in the late Nineteenth Century...76 14.6 A Real Story of Margaret Murray, famous British Archeologist and her Mother in Calcutta...92 REFERENCES...102

1. ANCIENT INDIA The Indian subcontinent is a large piece of land comprising the present countries of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, and is a geographical identity by itself. It is approximately the shape of a four-sided parallelogram. Its two northern sides are bounded by two ranges of mountains: namely, the Himalayas/Hindukush and the Sul-eiman mountains, and like great walls they shut off the Indian subcontinent from the eastern and northern part of Asia. On the tops of the Himalaya mountains, the snow never melts, and no living things can survive. In recent years a few expeditions have scaled several of these highest mountains, but they have not been able to establish any settlements there. On the other hand, the Hindukush and Suleiman mountains on the northwest have a few valleys called passes, thousands of feet high which are also filled with snow for the greater part of the year. The names of these passes are the Khyber and Bolan passes. On the northeast are the Patkoi hills, and between these and the eastern end of the Himalayas, the mighty river Brahmaputra, which has its source in Tibet, has pierced its way to enter the subcontinent in the eastern most state Arunachala Pradesh of India. The passes into the subcontinent from the northeastern side are through the opening made by the Brahmaputra river. To the south of the Himalayas lies the northern part of the subcontinent, through which the two great rivers, the Indus and the Ganga (Ganges) flow, the Indus being in the western part and the Ganga in the eastern part. South of this plain lie the Vindhya and Satpura mountains, which to some extent shut out the southern part which is bounded by the oceans. This southern part is called the Deccan, which means south. The Vindhya mountains almost come down to the sea on the western side, but on the eastern end they sink into lower ground which is called the plateau of Chota Nagpur and lies partly in the present states of Bihar, Chattisgarh and Orrissa of India. The easiest way from the northern plains to the south is through the eastern side, though migrations have taken place through the western side also. The Deccan is a country filled 1

with hills and rivers. On the western side is a range of high hills called the Western Ghats or Sahyadri mountains, and on the eastern side are the lower ranges called the Eastern Ghats. Nearly all the rivers of the Deccan, like the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and the Kaveri, have their sources in the Western Ghats, and then move eastward and eventually fall into the Bay of Bengal. A few rivers like the Narmada and the Tapti flow in the westerly direction and fall into the Arabian Sea. The Western Ghats almost come down to the Arabian Sea, and there is a very narrow coastline on this side, while the Eastern Ghats are a little away from the sea, and there is a wider coast line on the east. The two ranges meet in the high Nilgiri mountains in the south. The wider coast on the eastern side ends in a fairly large plain in the state of Tamilnadu of India. In the earliest ages, India was inhabited by a great many tribes belonging to two great races, namely the Dravids and the Kols. The Kols lived in Northern India, while the Dravids, who were more numerous, inhabited every part of the country. The Kols lived chiefly by hunting and also used to dig up the ground first with wooden tools and later on with tools made of iron. They were divided into families and lived in villages. They worshipped the ghosts of their forefathers and spirits which they thought lived in the forests. As time went by, they mixed up with the other races that came into India through the passes in the northwest and the northeast in the great Himalaya mountains, which form a natural, almost impenetrable border between the Indian subcontinent and the high plateau and mountainous regions of Afghanistan, Tibet and China. There are very few traces of them today, except in the Kol tribes who live in the hilly parts of the present states of West Bengal, Chota Nagpur (in the present Jharkand State), Orrissa and Madhya Pradesh. The most important of them are the Bhils and the Santals. They are slowly and with difficulty getting into the mainstream of Indian society. There are one or two guesses about the Dravids or the Dravidians. They might have been the same race as the Kols, and having lived for ages in the more fertile valleys of the Indus and Ganges rivers of the north and in the river valleys of the peninsular part of the country through which flow the great rivers Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri, they might have developed a stronger civilization, which may be called the Dravidian civilization. Some of the historians think that they came from the regions towards the northwest of the subcontinent, and some others think that they came from a country called Gondwana, which very long ago stretched into the Indian Ocean; and they might have been related to the original inhabitants of Australia and the inhabitants of the islands of the Indian ocean. The people of India do not form the only ancient people in the world. They were a composite people born when the human race as a whole had advanced down the highway of history. The ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks 2

and the Chinese had at least equally great contributions. The history of India is a part of world history and it should be studied against that background The Dravidians had large herds of cattle, and they cut down the thick forests that covered the country, cleared them and cultivated it with grains like wheat and barley in the north, with rice in the wet parts of the east and and in the south. The archeological discoveries at Taxila and Harappa in the Punjab and at Mahenjo Daro in Sind, now in the Pakistani part of the Indian subcontinent, which were done in the early part of the twentieth century, reveal a civilization which probably existed around 3000 B.C. Here lay, under successive deep layers of sand, the remains of a people who had distinguished themselves in the arts and science that made life pleasant and complex. This is usually called the Indus valley civilization. The people lived in cities of considerable size and high standards of living. Theirs was a city civilization similar to Sumer and Akkad in Mesopatamia. Their religion included tree and animal worship and the use of phallic symbols. The figure of Naga, the serpent, is found very often. The symbols of Shiva and of the mother goddess are also found, and also found is the worship of the bull, which is the vehicle of Shiva. The mother goddess is symbolic of the matriarchal system that probably existed among these very old peoples of India. This Indus valley civilization probably disappeared, due to the furies of the Indus river, or possibly due to a very strong earthquake. The buildings unearthed remind us of the gopurams (or towers) of the temples of South India. These discoveries show that the ancient natives of these parts could be allied to the Dravidians. The people of the Indian subcontinent in the earliest ages belonged to two great races the Kols and the Dravids (also called Dravidians) and the time could be before 3000 B.C. The Kols lived in Northern India, and the Dravidians lived all over India. The Dravids (or Dravidians) had large herds of cattle, and they cultivated the land and grew wheat, rice and dry grains. They worshipped the earth, which they called their great mother, as well as trees and snakes. They sacrificed goats. fowls and buffaloe to please their Gods. They lived in villages, each with a headman whom they obeyed. Though we do not know much about the the origin of the Dravidians, they had large settlements under kings, to whom the headman of each village gave a share of the grain. There were great Dravidian cities and temples all over the country. The Dravidians and the Kols lived side by side, but the Dravidians, being more numerous and stronger, took for themselves the more fertile lands. Also they were great traders and sent teak, muslin, peacocks, ivory, sandalwood, and rice to other countries by sea, long before the next invaders into the country, namely, the Aryans came to the country from the northwest. The Dravidians were dark complexioned, 3

short and flat-nosed compared to the Aryans, who were fair, tall and with sharp noses. In general, the majority of the people living in South India may be almost pure Dravidian. They had attained a certain level of civilization and culture, as proven by the attainments of their languages and literature in Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam, especially in Tamil. One such account is to be found in the Vedic hymns of the Aryans who entered India through the passes in the northwest from the cold dry mountainous regions of Central Asia around 2000 B.C. These hymns of the Rig Veda tell you about the hundred castles of Sambara, about the magnificiant cities of the Gandharvas, and so on. These Vedic hymns of the ancient times also attribute bravery and superior architectural skill to the Asuras and Nagas, the names they gave to the Dravidian people whom they encountered when they came to India. The Aryans were wandering people from the regions to the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, who came through the Khyber and Bolan passes to the Punjab (land of five rivers, the Indus and its tributories, and now shared by Pakistan and India). As a result of the conflict, contact and intermingling with the already settled Dravidians, the foundations of the history of the people of India are laid. Arriving from the harsh mountains of Afghanistan and the countries beyond between 2000 and 3000 B.C., these Aryans must have found the Punjab with its rivers and fertile river banks very tempting to settle down. Some of them did settle down there, but the more adventurous of them went in a southeasterly direction and found the more tempting valleys of the rivers Ganges and Yamuna and othe tributaries of Ganga more tempting. Here they confronted the Dravidians, whom they called Dasyus (Black people) and Anasas (Noseless people). They conquered these Dasyus and Anasas and made some of them their slaves. They thought that they were superior to the people whom they conquered. Slowly they intermarried with them and produced the people of the Indian subcontinent. These Aryans were pastoral people and their society was patriarchal. They came with their cattle, oxen, and horses on which they rode. They learned agriculture from the conquered Dravidians, and learned to grow wheat, barley, and rice in the Punjab and in the Gangetic valley. Each Aryan tribe had a leader who was looked upon as the father, and he was their leader in war and peace. Religion played a very important part in the households of the patriarchal chiefs of the tribes. Their religion was very simple and consisted in worshipping of the forces of nature, of Indra (God of thunder), of Varuna (God of the sky), of Ushas (Goddess of Dawn). The Saraswati River (now disappeared) was the last river in the Punjab that they crossed, and Saraswati became their Goddess of wisdom. In the land of the Punjab, the Aryan tribes ruled over small kingdoms which Alexander the Great found when he came to India in the 4

year 320 B.C. Some of these dynasties were the Purus, Turvasas, Yadus, Anus, and Druhyus. They fought with each other on the banks of the rivers and slowly pushed the native Dravidians into the Vindhya and Satpura mountains and into the Deccan (which they called Dakshina Desa or the southern country). After spending about 1000 years in the Punjab from 2000 B.C. to 1000 B.C., the Aryans moved south-eastward to the valleys of the Ganges and Yamuna, which they called Mad-hya Desa or the Middle Country. These two rivers unite at Allahabad (or Prayag) in the present state of Uttar Pradesh and become the mighty Ganges (or Ganga) which goes east through the state of Bihar, and then south into the state of Bengal (comprising of the present Indian state of West Bengal and the present country of Bangladesh). It was here in the valleys of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers, that the Aryans settled and lived long and prospered. They built the kingdoms of Kosala, Videha, Ayodhya, Varanasi (or Kasi), Prayag (or Allahabad), Kanyakubja (or Kanauj) and Gaya. It was here that the Aryans intermarried with the Dravidians and the Kols. The stories of the great Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana took place at this time. It was around this time that the social organization was molded and forged and knit into the caste system (also called Varnashrama Dharma) of India. This caste system, which has persisted throughout the ages till the present time, governs the social organization of the Hindus (name given by the Greeks to the inhabitants of the Indus valley and beyond of India, which name was also given by the Greeks). At that time, the other religions of India like Jainism and Buddhism were not yet born, and the foreign religions of Christianity and Islam took many more centuries to be born in the middle east countries of Israel. Palestine and Saudi Arabia. These foreign religions slowly came to India as tim e wthis ent by. caste system has gone through many alterations as time passed by, but is still existent today in a modified form. It was at this time, that is between 2000 B.C. and 1000 B.C., that the people of the land called Madhya Desa contemplated the ideas that found later expression in the philosophical and religious books called the Vedas, Brahmanas, and the Upanishads. The fertile valleys of the river Ganges and its tributaries resulted in an increase of population, and these people started colonising the lands towards the east in the direction of Bengal and Orrissa, and then towards the south, crossing the Vindhya mountains, both in the east and in the west. These migrations were more like colonising the Deccan (the triangular part of India jutting out into the ocean) and not like invasions. The stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata give glimpses of this slow trickling of the Aryans down south into the southern territories predominanty populated by the Dravidians. The Aryans found that these Dravidians had an advanced civilisation, and some of these people were the Andhras, the Pandyas, the 5

Cholas, the Chalukyas, the Hoysalas, the Gangas, and so on. The Aryans mixed up with the better educated and ruling people of these kingdoms, and absorbed some of their ideas. The language of the Aryans was Sanskrit and the north Indian languages of the Indian subcontinent, namely Pushtu, Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi, Rajasthani, Mythili, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Mahrathi, and Konkani are all derived from Sanskrit, and may be called the group of Indo-European languages. The languages of South India, namely Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu and Telugu belong to the Dravidian group of languages, and have literature as old or older than that of the North Indian group. There has been quite a lot of interaction between Sanskrit, the North Indian languages and the South Indian languages. The languages spoken in the northeastern part of the country belong to a third group, which may be called tribal languages, and they also have interaction with the other two main groups. Coming back to the concept of the caste system or Varnashrama Dharma as it has been known from these ancient times, it has the literal meaning The law of the society of colours. A fair skinned conquering race might have stamped its rule upon the dark skinned conquered race by dividing them into castes, the upper fair skinned castes being the conquerors, and the lower castes being the dark skinned conquered castes. There are other theories that say that the system was based on the differences created by work and occupation. Both theories are true to a certain extent, but both of them do not explain the important and distinctive feature of the caste system, that the caste of a person is determined by birth and is unalterable during his or her lifetime. But whatever the origin, caste has been the overwhelming factor of The Hindu society in India, and it is still continuing today in the country. Even before the Aryans came down through the passes in the northwest, another race called Turanians or Tartars came down through the Brahmaputra valley in the northeast and filled the area now called Assam, Bengal and the northeastern states of India. They were short with broad heads, flat noses, and narrow slanting eyes. They fought with the Kols and the Dravidians, but gradually mixed up with them. Some of them got absorbed in the Hindu religion and Hindu society in the states of Bengal and Assam, but the ones in the far northeast had their own tribal religions, which cannot be called exactly Hinduism. From about 1000 B.C. to 300 B.C., many Hindu states had been formed by the mingling of the Aryans, the Dravidians, the Kols, the Turanians, and other minor tribes of the country. This may be called the old Hindu age: The Vedas were established, and the Hindu caste system had been established. The highest caste, the Brahmins. were the priests; the second caste, the Kshatriyas were the rulers and warriors; the third caste, the Vaishyas, were the traders and merchants; while the fourth caste, the Sudras, and the 6

biggest caste were the common people who did the work of agriculture and other trades which were necessary for the society. The old Vedic language was replaced by Sanskrit, which became the language of the Brahmins, and the common people of North India spoke different forms of Prakrit from which the north Indian languages belonging to the group of Indo European languages have been derived. Though the area of the Deccan and South India generally came under the general influence of this Hindu religion and the Hindu caste system, there were some variations due to the fact that some old features of Dravidian culture still held sway. Also, the South Indian languages, namely, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, and Tulu flourished very well and became better developed during this age. The North Indian languages and the South Indian languages were influenced by each other and in the process got enriched. Outside these four castes, the fifth caste of Panchamas (also called Chandalas) or outcastes existed, and they were assigned to do the lowliest of the jobs. There were stiil some tribals, especially in the hilly forested areas, who did not belong to any of these five castes. During this age, the caste system was a little flexible and was not as rigid as it became sometime later on. At the close of this old Hindu age, the Persians (now called Iranians) and the Greeks came to India. From the time that the Aryans entered India, it was after about a thousand years that we hear about the coming of these Persians and Greeks. In this period of a thousand years, probably many tribes came down from the Northwest again and again, but there are no records of their comings. The Aryans who went into Persia (the present day Iran) founded a very mighty kingdom there. About 500 B.C., the king of Persia, named Darius, ruled over the whole of Western Asia, including the countries now called Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkemenistan, and the Punjab, which is now in Pakistan and in India and Sind province in Pakistan. Punjab was supposed to have been the richest province of this Persian empire. The Greeks were at that time the most learned and the bravest of all European nations. One of their kings named Alexander set out to invade the Persian empire, and he finally arrived in India. He fought with the local Kshatriya king named Porus on the banks of the river Jhelum, a tributary of the Indus river, in the year 327 B.C. After this long campaign, Alexander s soldiers were very tired and wished to go back to their homes, though Alexander would have liked to conquer the whole of India. There are some accounts of this campaign written by the Greeks which describe the people of India who were Hindus at that time. After the death of Alexander, though his general named Seleukos tried to keep the Punjab as a part of the Greek empire; the king of Magadha (present Bihar state of India) named Chandragupta Maurya conquered the Punjab, and made it a 7

part of his large empire which extended over the whole of the North Indian plains of the subcontinent. There was a Greek ambassador named Megasthenes at the court of Chandragupta Maurya, who has left written records of the people of this vast empire. He says that the people were brave and truthful, and the women were good and pure, and there were no slaves. People were honest, and they did not use locks on their doors, because they trusted each other. He also mentions that some of them were fair-skinned, who were the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas and Vaishyas, and there were dark-skinned people who were the Sudras and lower castes. Each village was a complete economic and social unit, and it had people of every caste, every trade, and every profession in it. In fact this type of village setup lasted through the ages till very recently up to the twentieth century. The name that Indians gave to the Greeks is Yavanas. Some of the Greeks stayed away in India and intermarried and got mixed up with the local people. Recently the Indian newspaper Deccan Herald has reported the presence of a very small group of people (about a thousand) in number living an isolated primitive type of life in one of the high valleys of the Himalaya mountains in the present state of Himachala Pradesh. These people are tall, fair and sharp featured, with brilliant green eyes, and they speak a dialect which is similar to a Mediterranean dialect. They are wary of outsiders and are secretive about some of their relgious practices. The valley can be reached only with difficulty for a few months in summer, and the rest of the year it is snow bound. They practice a basic form of democracy, wherein they elect their chiefton and their village council by a system of votes. Some of these basic facts of their society have made some people think that a few of Alexander s soldiers escaped and took shelter in this secluded valley. In the year 567 B.C. was born Gautama, also called Siddhartha, in Kapilavastu, about hundred miles north of Varanasi in the present state of Uttar Pradesh. He became the famous Buddha, the founder of the great religion Buddhism, which discarded the Vedas and Upanishads on which the Hindu religion is based and also the caste system. Buddha s teachings were very simple so that the common man could understand. He taught people that it was their duty to be good and kind to all living beings including human beings. He said that all human beings are free and equal, and everybody has to live a pure and holy life and speak the truth and commit no sin. His teachings appealed to the common man, and a very large number of Hindus became Buddhists in a very short time. Buddhism became the most important religion of India for nearly one thousand years till about the eighth century A.D., and this may be called the Buddhist Age. At the same time the religion called Jainism also existed, which was very similar to Buddhism in its teachings, founded by Mahavira, who lived in the region corresponding to the present state of Bihar, and who was born in 599 B.C. Jainism also rejected the Vedas but 8

accepted the caste system as only a social system. The simple teachings of Jainism is Do no injury to anyone, and do good to everybody. This simple teaching appealed to a large number of people. While Buddhism has almost left India today, Jainism is still followed by a large number of people in the India of today. During these thousand years of the Buddhist age, India had very great rulers like Ashoka (B.C. 272-232) who ruled over Magadha in the present Bihar state, and who sent Buddhist monks to Kashmir, Afghanistan, Tibet, Burma (present Myanmar), and to South India and Sri Lanka. His fourteen edicts or rules written on rocks and on stone pillars are found all over India. During this Buddhist period, a great many of the tribes which lived in Central Asia, and who were called Scythians by the Greeks, came down into India one after the other, as the Aryans had done ages before. They settled down in the areas which are represented by the present states of Kashmir, the Punjab, Sind, Gujerat, and the western part of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh of the Indian subcontinent. They formed their own small states side by side with the Indo-Greek states that already existed. Slowly, they conquered the whole of this part of the country. One of these tribes, known as Sakas, which was one of the first to arrive, ruled this part of the country with Ujjain (now in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh) as capital for about four hundred years till 400 A.D., when they were overthrown by the great Hindu king Vikramaditya. At this time Buddhism was the most important religion of the people. Another Indo-Scythian tribe called the Kushans ruled over parts of North India from 45 A.D. to 225 A.D., and their kingdom consisted of the present Turkemenistan, Afghanistan, the Punjab, and Sind. Kanishka was their greatest king and he had his capital at Purushapura (the present Peshawar of Pakistan). He was a very zealous Buddhist and held a great Buddhist council in the year 140 A.D. in Kashmir, after which he sent forth Buddhist missionaries to preach in Central Asia and China, which parts of the world eventually became Buddhist. At this time, Hinduism did not quite vanish from the subcontinent, but lay low, and it existed with Buddhism all over the subcontinent including South India. From about 300 A.D. to 600 A.D., a dynasty of Hindu kings called the Guptas ruled over North India and parts of South India. Two of these kings named Samudragupta (326-375 A.D.) and Chandragupta Vikramaditya (375-413 A.D) were very famous kings of this dynasty and had their capital at Ujjain in the present Indian state of Mad-hya Pradesh., Samudragupta ruled over the Ganges Valley and led an expedition to South India and carried away great spoils. He was also a poet and played well on the musical instrument called the vina or the lute. Chandragupta Vikramaditya was a greater king. He conquered the areas which were ruled by the Sakas, and also parts of South India. Tales of his times, known as the tales of Vikramaditya, emperer of Ujjain, are 9

told in every village of India. Many learned men, including the famous Sanskrit playwright called Kalidasa (known as the Indian Shakespeare) lived at his court. Fa Hian, a Chinese pilgrim who came to visit the Buddhist sacred places in India, visited his court and has written about the life of the people of the Indian subcontinent of those days, and he praises the good government of Vikramaditya. Chandragupta Vikramaditya became a follower of Jainism and retired and died at Shravanabelagola, a famous Jain shrine in the present state of Karnataka. The Gupta empire was overthrown by hordes of wild Mongol tribes called Huns from central Asia about the year 450 A.D. They ruled over the area consisting of the Punjab and the valley of the Yamuna river. King Toraman and his son Mihiragula were very cruel and killed many of the local people. At last, King Baladitya of Magadha and king Yasodharman of Central India together led a great army against Mihiragula and defeated him near the present city of Multan in Pakistan, driving him and his armies out of the subcontinent. The Huns were in the Indian subcontinent for nearly a hundred years, and some of them settled down in the country. Another tribe called Gujjers or Gurjers also came down from Central Asia and behaved just like the Huns. The Gupta kings ruled for another two hundred years and had their capital at Thaneswar. At this time all the three religions, namely Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism existed side by side. After about 400 A.D., Buddism gradually declined and Hinduism became stronger, and by the eighth and ninth centuries A.D., Buddhism almost disappeared from India and took root in many of the countries east of India, like Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Malayasia, Indo China (now Kampuchea, Laos and Vietnam), China, and Japan. This change of Hinduism becoming the main religion of the subcontinent, was due to the preaching of zealous Brahmin and other Hindu teachers, like Shankaracharya in the eighth century, Ramanujacharya and Madhvacharya in the twelfth century, all of them from South India, and in northern India, Ramananda in the thirteenth century, Kabir in the fourteenth century, Chaitanya in the fifteenth century, and Vallabhaswamy in the sixteenth century. This age may be called the new Hindu age or the Puranic age. This new Hindu age was called the Puranic age, because it was at this time that the Puranas or old books were composed and written due to the new vigour which was inspired by the great teachere who were revivalists and who interpreted the old scriptures with a new interpretation which would appeal to all classes and castes. The highest ideals of the monistic and dualistic philosophies of the Vedas and of the Upanishads were meant for the more intelligent and learned people. God is at first the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer: God is immanent in nature; Whatever is real is He; Thou art That. This type of high philosophy could not appeal to the less intelligent and the common people. 10

Shankaracharya reinstituted the worship of the different forms of God like Ganapati (son of Shiva), Vishnu (or Narayana), Shiva, Shakti (mother goddess), and Surya (sun god). He at the same time stopped the sacrifices of living beings. Similarly, Ramanujacharya instituted the worship of Vishnu and also the worship of your Ishtadevata (your own personal God). Chaitanya, and some others taught the people to worship God by singing songs in his praise. All these new innovations appealed to the people, and they became followers of these new teachers of Hinduism. Also many old Hindu temples were renovated and newer methods of worship were taught. This brought back many Buddhists into the Hindu fold again. Shankaracharya had vehement discussions with the Buddhist priests and won. On the other hand, the Jains kept to themselves and did not oppose the coming back of Hnduism in a different form. Maybe this is the reason Jainism did not quite disappear from India as did Buddhism. In this new Hindu Age, the caste system became very rigid with all the do s and don ts that every member of a certain caste or subcaste had to observe. This was probably due to the continuous raids from different races and tribes from Central Asia. To keep their identity and as much as possible not to learn the ways of the raiders, the Hindu caste system developed a new law code called the Code of Manu. It was Manu who codified all the different methods of conduct for the different Hindu castes and subcastes and for men and women belonging to these castes. Anybody who broke any of these laws was excommunicated. Also, to avoid an outsider getting into this Hindu caste system, the law was made that you could belong to a caste or subcaste only if you were born in that caste. This made the Hindu caste system a unique closed social system found anywhere in the world. You had to be born a Hindu in a particular caste or subcaste. You could not be admitted or converted to a Hindu of a particular caste or subcaste. In spite of this there was a little mingling of outsiders with the Hindus and it was probably accepted with some reservations. This caste system has continued till today, maybe, with some small minor changes. It was also during this age that great Hindu dynasties like the Pandyas, the Cholas, the Cheras, the Chalukyas, the Gangas, the Hoysalas had powerful kingdoms in South India and in the Deccan. This was a time in which the South Indian languages flourished and produced some of their best literature in Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Telugu. This was the time that the North Indian languages developed and produced their own literature. One of the greatest kings of North India was Harsha, who ruled all the area from the Punjab to Assam from 606 to 648 A.D. during this time. He tried but could not conquer the Deccan. A Chinese pilgrim named Houen Tsang visited India to see all the Buddhist shrines and stayed for sometime in Harsha s court. He has written full accounts of his travels all over India. He says that the country 11

was well governed and that learned men were treated well. He has said that Brahminism, which is the basis of Hinduism, existed everywhere side by side with Buddhism, but that Buddhism was on the decline everywhere. Harsha held an assembly every five years and gave away all his riches and put on the robes of a beggar 12

2. INDIA THROUGH THE MIDDLE AGES The next important incident at the end of the new Hindu age was the coming of the Muslims to the Indian subcontinent. Muslims are the followers of the great prophet Muhammed who taught the Arabs of Saudi Arabia not to fight with each other and not to worship idols. He said that there is only one God and He is Allah. We can say that this religion began in 622 A.D., when Muhammed fled from Mecca to Medina to escape his enemies who wished to kill him. The year 622 A.D.is known as the Hijra. According to Islam, Muhammed is the Rasul or the messenger of God, and that all Muslims are brothers and equal in the sight of God. The Arabs were fierce and warlike, and after becoming the disciples of Muhammed, they could not fight with each other. In their zeal to spread their new religion, Islam, they thought that war against unbelievers was a holy war which would please God and that all Muslims who are killed in a holy war would go straight to Heaven. Those who yielded to the Muslims but would not change their religion had to pay a tax called Jazia, as a price of protection so that they could live in peace. The Arabs invaded the countries that lie to the north of Arabia, which they could conquer very easily, and took away a great amount of rich spoils. This made them eager to conquer other 13 other countries. And in about a hundred years, they had conquered Persia (Iran), Turkemenistan, Tajikastan, and Afghanistan, which was the old Persian empire. The people of these countries were easily converted to Islam. A small number of Persians who followed the old religion of Zorastr-ianism fled to Western India to escape conversion. In India they came to be called Parsis, and like the Aryans of the old times, consider the Sun as an emblem of God. They now live mostly in the big Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) and in a small area north of Mumbai. They are a very enlightened people and very peaceful and generous hearted. They are mostly in business and they now speak the Gujerati language (the language spoken in the state of Gujerat), and they worship in their fire temples. They are not involved in religious controversies, and though their numbers are very small, the Parsis have contributed very much for business, industry, and social welfare in India. The conquering of the countries to the north of India by the Arabs was the main reason why, for several hundreds of years, there were no great invasions of the tribes of Central Asia into the Indian subcontinent. During this time there was so much fighting between the

invading Arabs and the Persians and the tribes of Central Asia called the Tartars, that these tribes could not go down to India. About nine hundred years ago, that is, in the tenth century A.D., when they could not fight anymore, tribes from Central Asia, mainly the Turks and the Afghans, started pouring down into the Indian subcontinent through the passes in the northwest. The Turkish tribes were a mixture of the Aryans who did not come to India and the Tartar tribes of Central Asia. Some of the Greeks left by Alexander also had got mixed up with them. When the Arabs conquered them, they also got mixed up with them, and they had all become Muslims. Those who tilled the land and lived in towns were called Turks and Tajiks and were a little more civilized than the Tartars who roamed over the country with their flocks and herds.the Turks were big in size and fair complexed. The Afghans were a mixture of Aryans, Persians and Arabs. Ghazni was the capital of Afghanistan, which was a very mountainous country, and the king of the country was a Turk named Muhammad. India was a very rich country at that time, and the trade between India and the countries to the nortwest and to the northeast of India passed through Ghazni and other towns of Afghanistan. The goods were carried on long strings of camels. Muhammed had heard of the fabulous riches of India, and he raided India seventeen times to plunder and carry away the riches. His army became larger and larger, because the Turks and Afghans joined him in the raids to capture the riches of the famous temples of the northern part of the subcontinent. His last trip took him to the famous temple of Somnath in Gujerat, which he not only plundered but also destroyed in the year 1024 A.D. He left one of his generals in Lahore (now in Pakistan), who used to raid the country to the south east which is the Gangetic valley. After the Ghazni kings, another Turki tribe ruled with its capital at Ghor in northern Afghanistan. One of these kings named Muhammed of Ghor (1190-1206 A.D.) raided the Indian subcontinent nine times to plunder the rich cities and Hindu temples. He left his general named Kuttub to continue his work of raiding rich cities of the north Indian plains, and Kuttub became the governer of the Indian provinces. He declared himself king under the title Kuttubud-din. He built the famous pillar named Kuttub Minar in Delhi on the ruins of several Hindu temples that he destroyed. This pillar is 240 feet high and is a landmark of Delhi even today. Kutub was a slave as a young boy, and the dyanasty of Muslim kings he founded were called the Slave kings. Eight of these slave kings ruled North India for eightytwo years, and the last one was a queen called Sultan Razia. After the Slave kings, another dynasty called the Khiljis ruled for thirty-three years. Alluddin Khilji was the cruellest of them, who killed his uncle to ascend the throne and who sent his general named Malik 14

Kafur, who was a Hindu converted to a Muslim, to invade the Deccan to overthrow the old Hindu kingdoms, kill great numbers of people, destroy many Hindu temples, and carry away the riches. Allauddin left his Muslim generals to rule these kingdoms as his viceroys, but they finally made themselves kings of those kingdoms. Thus in a few hundred years, almost the whole of the subcontinent was ruled by Muslim kings, who had come down from Turkemenistan and Afghanistan. They were called the Pathan kings. They converted some of the people of the big cities to Islam and appointed them as their generals and viceroys, to help them rule the country. The converted people were favoured, and the others had to pay a tax called the Jazia. The rural people were usually left alone, but they had to pay a tax, and nothing much was done to improve their lot. They were the sawers of wood and drawers of water to serve the mighty kings, and they had to supply food grown by them to the rulers. Punishment was very severe if the people did not obey. So this was medieval India, and probably like any other country of Europe or Asia in the middle ages. The people in the countryside remained Hindus and were governed by the Hindu caste system with all its rigidities. A few of the people were Jains. Buddhism had almost disappeared from the subcontinent. After the Khiljis, a dynasty called the Tughlaks reigned for ninety-three years. Two of them were famous. Muhammed Tughlak was a very learned man and a poet, and he was very kind to learned friends and gave them rich gifts. He was also religious and brave. But he also did mad things like trying to conquer China by raising a very big army, which perished in the high mountains. To pay for these losses, he increased the taxes tremendously and made his subjects miserable, who fled from their homes to escape. This led him to hunt for these people in the forests, where they were killed if found. Twice he ordered his subjects to go and live in a faraway place in the Deccan eight hundred miles away. A large number of them died on the way, and the few who reached this strange city did not have houses to live in nor food to eat. He ordered them to come back to Delhi. Firuz, who ruled a little later, was one of the best Tughlak kings, and he reigned for forty years. He improved the country by making good roads and canals, creating schools for teaching Arabic and Persian, and building inns for travelers. Though Firuz treated the people far better than most of the earlier Muslim kings, he destroyed Hindu temples and built Moslem mosques out of their ruins. He has written his own story.in the time of the last Tughlak king, the wild Tartars from Central Asia rushed down into India with their leader, the famous Tamerlane. Timur-the-lame or Tamerlane as he was known, was the ruler of Turkestan (or Turkemenistan as it is known today), a Turk who had a big army of Tartars, Turks and Persians. He was very cruel and hard hearted. In the year 1398 A.D., he swept down like a storm through the passes in 15

the northwest into the subcontinent. He and his soldiers plundered and killed everywhere they went till they reached the capital Delhi. In Delhi, the Tughlak king was defeated, and for five days his army roamed through the city, killing the people and looting and burning their houses. With crowds of captives, he went back with his soldiers along the base of the Himalayas through the passes to Turkestan via Kabul. The five months Timur stayed in the Indian subcontinent passed like a dreadful dream, and the people long remembered with horror the atrocities he and his soldiers committed. After Timur came and went like a bad dream, a Muslim dynasty called the Saiads, who were Arabs, seized the throne of Delhi and ruled for thirty-six years. This dynasty was succeeded by the Lodi dynasty, which had three kings who reigned for seventy-six years, but they were kings of only Delhi and Agra and surrounding areas. The Punjab was under Muslim kings who were earlier governers of this land and similarly in Bengal and in Ayodhya around Allahabad and Jaunpur. The country between the Yamuna river and the Narmada river was called Malwa and was under Muslim rule, and the people who lived there were Rajputs who were driven south from their original homes in the rich country between the Ganga and Yamuna rivers. The rest of the area of what is now called the state of Rajastan south of the Aravali hills, was never conquered by the Muslims and was ruled by Rajput kings with their capitals at Udaipur and Chitor. In the Deccan, the area between the Narmada and the Krishna rivers were ruled by Muslim kings of the Bahmani dynasty, who were descended from the general of Muhammed Tughlak, for about two hundred years, and their capital was at Gulburga (now in Karnataka state). South of the Bahmani kingdom was the great Vijayanagar kingdom which lasted for two hundred and thirty years from 1336 A.D. to 1567 A.D., and it extended between the Krishna river to the area now represented by the states of Andhra and Karnataka and a little part of Tamilnadu. Its capital was Vijayanagar (near the present Hampi) on the Tungabhadra river in Karnataka. The greatness of Vijayanagar has been described by many foreign travelers, who visited the subcontinent those days. South of the Vijayanagar kingdom, were many small chieftans called Polygars and Nayaks who ruled over small areas and paid tribute to the kings of Vijayanagar. The Vijayanagar kings were defeated by the Muslim kings of the Deccan in the famous battle at Talikota (near Raichur in the present state of Karnataka) in the year 1564 A.D. The rulers of Vijayanagar retired to Penukonda. After this battle, the descendants became the Maharajas (or rulers) of old Mysore state with its capital at Mysore city or sometimes at Srirangapattana near Mysore. Around this time, Babar, a great grandson of Timur, became a king of Kokand, which was a small state of Turkestan in Central Asia, at 16

the age of thirteen years. As soon as he became king, he had to fight with his uncle, and then he roamed all over the country fighting nearly every day, sometimes a victor, sometimes fleeing for his life, and spending the whole day on horseback. This was the life of the tribes of Central Asia in those days. Finally he decided to go south into the Indian subcontinent. With his followers, he conquered the Afghans and the cities of Kabul and Ghazni. He reigned in Kabul for several years, and then he thought he was strong enough to conquer India. He was now forty years old, and he descended down into the Punjab with his seasoned fighters, and then advanced towards Delhi. The armies of the Pathan king Ibrahim Lodi of Delhi was no match to Babar s steel-clad horsemen, and they were completely defeated in the battle at Panipat which was a plain near Delhi in the year 1526 A.D.This battle made Babar the master of the kingdom of Delhi. In a few more years, Babar could defeat most of the Muslim rulers of North India, and also the Rajput king Rana Sangha. So Babar became the emperor of North India. Though he loved to fight, he was not a cruel man, and he ruled the people fairly well and wisely. He did not destroy all Hindu temples, except one at Ayodhya in the present state of Uttar Pradesh, about which a very big controversy is going on now in India. Babar was the first Mughal emperor of India, the word Mughal being a corrupted form of the word Mongol. The Mongols of the country east of Turkestan had got mixed up with the people of Turkestan over the ages. They are also called Tartars, but somehow the word Mughal has been used for this new dynasty of rulers of Northern India. Babar reighned for only four years at Delhi when he became ill. His son Humayun was also ill at that time, and Babar prayed to Allah to take him away and make his son well. Allah listened to his prayer, and Humayun got better and Babar died in the year 1530 A.D. Humayun was the second Mughal emperor of North India. He was a very kind man, and he gave one of his kingdoms to each one of his younger brothers. But these brothers were selfish and fought agaist Humayun, each one of them wishing to become the emperor. A great Afghan governer of Bengal named Sher Khan was a very powereful ruler at this time, and he marched his strong army towards Delhi, and defeated Humayun s army in 1540 A.D. Humayun with his family fled to Persia where he could take shelter under the Shah of Persia. The Shah helped him conquer his brothers, who were in Afghanistan, and to establish himself as the ruler of Afghanistan. After Sher Khan died, Humayun came back to Delhi and reigned for a few years, and died in 1556 at the age of fifty years. Sher Khan was called Sher Shah after he became the King. Though earlier he was cruel and crafty, he ruled very wisely and well after he became king. He was not lazy and indolent like the earlier Muslim kings but was very hardworking and looked after all the af- 17

fairs of the state by himself. He also made those under him work as hard as himself. He governed the country much better than any other Afghan king before him. He did not oppress the Hindus, and employed many of them to help him govern the country well. One of them was Todar Mull, who was in charge of the revenue and taxes. Sher Shah s son suceeded him. but he was not able to do as well as his father. After his death, Humayun succeeded and continued the Mughal line but died very soon afterwards. The Mughal dynasty continued with Akbar, who was Humayun s son and who was only thirteen years old when he became king. Akbar had many enemies when he became king, but Beiram, who was a Turki chief who had married Akbar s father s sister, helped him conquer all his opponents with a strong hand. He taught the young Akbar how to ride and swim and to use the bow and the spear, so that he became an excellent soldier. Beiram governed the country as regent for five years till Akbar came of age and became King and could rule the country by himself. Beiram was very unwilling to give up the power, but the young emperor Akbar was firm, and finally Beiram gave up and went on a journey to Mecca. He was murdered on his way by an Afghan whose father had been killed by him. It was a time when these powerful Muslim rulers of India were wild and rough, and they killed each other as a day to day affair. After Beiram was gone, Akbar took the reins in his own hands and started to do the things he wanted to do. He was very clever and thoughtful, and he was strong physically, having spent his early days in the cold mountains of Afghanistan. He belived that he must make the Hindus his faithful friends and followers if his kingdom was to be strong and survive. He had grand ambitions to make himself the emperor of the whole Indian subcontinent. At that time there were a large number of Rajput kingdoms in the area now called Rajastan. Akbar de- termined to make them his friends and allies and with their help to overcome the Pathan kingdoms of North India. He first of all marched his army into Rajastan and conquered all the Rajput kingdoms there. He made friends with the rulers called Rajas or Maharajas, treated them kindly, and requested them to acknowledge him to be their emperor. Akbar also married many Rajput princesses and made their fathers and brothers officers in his army. Thus the Rajput chiefs became his relatives and friends. With the help of these Rajput friends and relatives, Akbar could overcome one by one the existing Muslim kingdoms of North India, like Bengal, Kashmir, Sind, Malwa, Gujerat. Kabul and Kandahar. Thus he became the Mughal emperor of tne subcontinent north of the Vindhya mountains. Because he was partly Turkish and Partly Persian, he could speak both the languages very well. Physically he was very strong and could endure a lot of physical strain. As he grew older he became more and more kindhearted. Though he was brought up 18